They all made their way back through the jumble of fallen shelves and shattered cores, and Kaz found that walking instead of flying didn't help him resist the press of ki rising from those sad, scattered spheres. It wasn't as bad right next to the door, since some of the ki made its way out into the rest of the mountain, but the coating of wei on the walls held the rest of it in. At least it did until the Tiger reared up and slashed at the wall, chipping and cracking the coating. The Rabbit watched, clearly pleased, and her cheerful encouragement brought the Tiger's head up and his round, fuzzy ears forward. Kaz could see that Heishe was right. This Tiger was a creature of energy, strength, and confidence. Once he had those things restored to him, he might well be someone Kaz would like.

Kaz stayed by Li, using the pressure of his hand on her cool, smooth scales to remind himself who and where he was. He would need to take care of these cores, and soon, but that would be a difficult task in many ways, and just for a moment he wanted to experience some joy. From the way Heishe and the others were acting, he had a feeling that was exactly what he was about to get.

They reached the innocuous-seeming table where Nucai had committed so many horrors, and paused. Kaz looked around, trying to tell if any of the other cores nearby were different in any way. If he remembered correctly, they still didn't know what had happened to the Horse, Goat, Monkey, or Pig. He still had only the faintest idea what a pig or goat looked like, but surely the cores of members of the Twelve would seem different, even in their coatings of wei. Though, come to think of it, whose core had been in Qiangde's pouch?

He had just turned to ask Heishe when the wall next to the table cracked. Flakes of wei fell to the floor, and then a tiny hole appeared. That hole became much larger very quickly, revealing the busily-working jaws of a very familiar rodent.

Mei didn't seem to like the taste of the wei at all, shaking her head and spitting out as much of it as she could. Kaz and Li moved forward - though Li took a moment to let Shom slide from her back - and used fingers and claws to pry off chunks of the white substance. This allowed Mei to eat the stone by itself, and the fuergar gave them a brief glance of gratitude before focusing on the white core sitting on the rim of the large bowl built into the table.

Without pausing, Mei leaped from her fresh tunnel, scrambling only slightly to keep her footing as she landed. Opening her jaws in a way that made Kaz blink, she swallowed the old Rat's core whole. Everything froze.

The world turned to look at Mei, and Mei stared back, her beady eyes taking it all in. Her core pulsed, shifting so far toward Metal that the other colors all but vanished, which didn't appear to bother Mei in the least. Ki flooded out, filling the rodent's body until Kaz had to blink against the pure white light. Something snapped into place, another fragment of a broken teacup glued back together, and Mei shook her head. When her eyes met Kaz's this time, there was a new depth to the intelligence he saw there, but she didn't speak. Instead, she turned her back, leaped into the hole she'd made, and scrambled back up toward the surface.

As she did, Kaz heard Kyla's voice echoing down the small tunnel. "Mei? Mei, come back! The pups are squeaking!" Her voice was more than a little frantic, and Kaz let his tongue loll in a grin before sobering.

"Heishe, you said some of the Twelve have families, didn't you?" he asked. "Will it matter that she has pups?"

Heishe's head swayed. <not at all. we each make our own choices about how we live our lives, and so long as we protect the balance and those we accepted as ours, no one will question what we do.>

Kaz definitely needed to spend some time speaking to Heishe about what was expected of him, but right now he had enough to do, and he was quite certain that his place was here, at least for now. Everything else would come in due time.

The Rabbit huffed a happy little breath, her long ears twitching. <Now we're six, and we have at least one of each element. I look forward to meeting our new little sister properly, but I understand the need to care for one's young. There will be time enough for introductions later.> She looked around, soft brown eyes becoming sad as she took in all the cores. <These need to be freed, but I'm sorry, Brother, I need to rest for a while. Perhaps even more, I need to see the sun, and feel the grass beneath my paws. I'm tired of being cold.>

Kaz bowed his head. He had never expected them to help him with this, and the fact that she had even thought to do so warmed him from deep within his heart. "You need to heal, Tu, and so does Hu." He wasn't quite ready to call them Sister and Brother yet. "I will have help."

She nodded, then glanced around again. <We'll go, then. At least, we will if you can tell us how to get out of here.>

Kaz managed a credible laugh, then opened his mind to Kyla again. "Did Mei make it back to you?"

He could feel his cousin's relief, followed closely by irritation. <Did she go to you? What happened? I keep offering her food, and she won't eat. Not even mithril!>

Kaz and Li exchanged amused glances. "She's just full, I think. But could you ask her to make her tunnel larger? We're going to need a better way in and out of here. And ask the chiefs to send away anyone they can't trust to be able to resist cores."

There was a moment of silence, and then Kaz felt…something, from someone he had never been able to reach before. Resignation and agreement came to him, and then small noises began to emerge from the tunnel. Kaz turned to Heishe, startled. "Can I speak to all of you? Including Mei?"

Heishe's tongue flickered in a laugh. <of course. you are never alone, little brother.>

"Then how did Qiangde capture any of you without the others knowing?" he demanded without thinking, and all three of the other Divine Beasts flinched.

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<He took me too quickly,> the Rabbit admitted. <I didn't even realize what was happening before the crystal was in my core, and after that I couldn't reach the others.>

Heishe sighed. <i suspect the same is true of most of us. we became too accustomed to being able to handle anything ourselves. by the time we realized we should have called for help, it was too late to do so.>

<What about Fengji and the others who did realize something was wrong?> Li asked, and Heishe's head sank.

<by then i had spurned them enough times that i doubt they would have called for me,> Heishe told them, sounding subdued. <but i believe it happened because kobolds are something the world doesn't understand. we who are so bound into the cycle of everything can barely see those who are outside of it. fengji and sunhou were weakened by a creature who came through the gate, and a pair of dragons killed sunhou while xiyi poisoned fengji, then bound him in white shackles.> She flicked a piece of wei with her tail. <i suppose now we know what those were made of.>

Kaz shook his head. He had seen over and over how pride led to defeat. Not that pride was itself foolish, because he was also coming to see that those who were too humble never believed that they were capable of making a difference, or worthy of being a leader, and thus never tried. There had to be some middle ground, and he hoped that someday he might find it.

The wall cracked again, but this time Mei didn't bite through the coating of wei that still covered the wall around her original hole. Instead, she squeaked loudly, and Kaz watched her bright core scamper back up the tunnel, leaving them behind. Clearly, Mei had better things to do, like taking care of her pups.

The Tiger took care of the final layer with a single swipe of his massive paw, and wei fell, covering the ground in a fresh coating of sharp white chips. Kaz wasn't surprised to see that the tunnel thus revealed was large enough even for a kobold, but he wasn't quite sure what the huge Tiger was going to do. Would they have to call Mei back a third time, or should Kaz begin to cut through the stone himself?

Then Hu shimmered and shrank, leaving the Rabbit sitting beside a much smaller creature only about twice her size. His fur was as orange as ever, and the white of his paws and cheeks just as bright, but the black stripes had faded to a darker shade of orange.

The Tiger lifted a paw to his mouth and licked it, then smoothed the paw over his ears before standing and grabbing the back of the Rabbit's neck in his teeth. Gracefully, he leaped to the opening in the wall and sauntered up the steep slope, his tail giving a brief twitch, as if in farewell. The last Kaz heard of them was the Rabbit, exclaiming, <Hu! Hu, put me down right now! I can hop on my own, you know!>

Not long after the two disappeared, a sharp yelp came from above, followed by several pebbles, which were in turn followed by Kyla, who somehow managed to land on her paws when she slid out of the tunnel. Kaz was certain he would have landed on his tail, Dog or not, and found himself slightly envious of his cousin's grace.

<I think it's funny when you land on your tail,> Li told him, and he sighed.

"Kaz!" Kyla said, before he could even give the dragon a mock-growl. His cousin was staring around, and he could see the moment when she realized that all of the white orbs were cores, because her tail tucked, her ears flattened, and she let out a low whine. "What is this place? What did you do?"

Kaz didn't even know where to start, so he just shook his head. "We need help. All of the white on the walls and the cores will have to be removed, probably by males. I'll try to make sure the cores go back to the tribes they came from, but I think some of them are very old, and their tribes may not even exist any longer. There's also a huge room full of books and a pen that writes on its own that Lianhua will want to see. But first I need to gather up the things that came from my pouch."

He grimaced as he remembered the smell of some of those things. They hadn't seemed so bad when he picked them up one by one, but all together they were terrible. "Some of the things," he corrected, before continuing. "Idla is still here somewhere, too, along with at least some of the Goldblades, Goldcoats, and other Goldblade subsidiary tribes. I don't know where-"

"Here," came a voice, and they all turned to see Chi Yincang drop down from the hole Kaz had originally broken through the wall. It was much bigger now, with sharp round edges, allowing the dark-haired male to pass through while holding an unconscious kobold. The yellow roots of her fur and tattered but still magnificently decorated loincloth would have told Kaz who she was, even if he hadn't recognized her damaged core.

"Idla," he said, as Li hissed out a cloud of angry steam.

Chi Yincang's hand opened, dropping the Goldblade chief to the ground. His dark eyes flicked around, and he seemed to realize that he was going to have to speak, because he sighed so softly Kaz doubted he would have heard it before eating the Dog's core.

"There were guards," he said without inflection. "They're unconscious. More kobolds are in a holding room beyond the books."

And that was it. "Are they all right?" Kaz asked.

Chi Yincang inclined his head. "Frightened." He looked at the steep tunnel Mei had created. It was probably large enough for him, but he would have to wriggle through. He definitely wouldn't be able to maintain his usual dignity if he tried to use it.

"Lady Lianhua and Yingtao are above?" he asked, as if the amulets around his neck wouldn't tell him. Though perhaps they wouldn't, since the wei was still on much of the walls and ceiling.

Kyla nodded. "The rest of the Goldblades are going to make the hole bigger, since Mei won't do it."

"Are her babies all right?" Kaz asked, remembering.

His cousin grinned, her tail swinging wildly behind her. "They're fine. I got to hold them! I had to leave them with Raff while I came down, though."

As if her words had summoned the large male, Raff's voice called down, "Oi, Boss, you all right down there? They're gonna start digging in a minute."

Li gave a startled whistle. <Boss? Isn't that what he calls Lianhua?>

Kyla bared her teeth in something that could only loosely be called a grin. "Yes, but she ran off without telling him. He said something about that violating their contract, so I hired him." She puffed out her chest. "He's going to stay here and guard the portal, and maybe even hire some other humans to help. Ones who won't mind working for kobolds."

Kaz suspected there was more to the story than that, but his shoulders relaxed a little as he felt one of his concerns melt away. Lianhua had Chi Yincang and Yingtao, as well as her grandparents, so she was in good hands, but Raff was the only other human Kaz really trusted. He was glad the big man would be staying, no matter what his reasons for doing so might be.

The sound of pickaxes began ringing out from above, and fresh cascades of stone fell down the tunnel. Kaz quickly placed a shield across the opening to keep any more cores from being broken, and hurried to pick up the fallen spheres. Kyla and Li immediately began to help, and to Kaz's surprise, both Heishe and Chi Yincang did as well.

Lifting her voice above the sound of metal on stone, Kyla said, "Now, tell me everything."

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